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Blogspam and Proper Netizen Etiquette
Thread poster: Rossana Triaca
Rossana Triaca
Rossana Triaca  Identity Verified
Uruguay
Local time: 16:07
English to Spanish
Jun 18, 2012

Ok, I know that this post will in most likelihood be taken in the wrong way, but... I'm sick and tired of all the blogspam that's been posted to Proz lately (even by site staff), and we as a profession that thrives on selling copyrighted content and fights for proper attribution, well... we should know better.

At the risk of sounding preachy, I'll try to explain the basics (because I'm sure this springs from ign... See more
Ok, I know that this post will in most likelihood be taken in the wrong way, but... I'm sick and tired of all the blogspam that's been posted to Proz lately (even by site staff), and we as a profession that thrives on selling copyrighted content and fights for proper attribution, well... we should know better.

At the risk of sounding preachy, I'll try to explain the basics (because I'm sure this springs from ignorance rather than malice). Blogspam is unoriginal content reposted in a blog or social site merely for the purpose of driving traffic and increasing ranking. Why? Because page views translate into money in advertising revenues. So, the original author gets the shaft, and whoever makes the content popular by virtue of rehosting, linking or downright stealing it gets all the credit. Worst-offenders are sites that remove watermarks or change the format (say, convert text content into an image) to circumvent people from tracking the original author easily. Sometimes popular sites will actually link to the author's site as an aside, but after watching the video/funny picture or reading the article, the vast majority of users is not very likely to click on that link, so... the author gets neither credit nor revenue.

How can you tell if some content you enjoyed and want to share with your friends or favorite social networking site benefits the author? A simple Google search usually does the trick for articles and blog posts, and take into account that you can do a reverse image search with either Google or Tineye (just dragging a picture into Google's reverse image search yields amazing results).

Let's show the original authors some love and lead by example! ▲ Collapse
 
Alex Lago
Alex Lago  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 21:07
English to Spanish
+ ...
?? Jun 19, 2012

Could you give some examples I haven't noticed any Proz staff posting blogspam
 
Rossana Triaca
Rossana Triaca  Identity Verified
Uruguay
Local time: 16:07
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
Already being taken care of... Jun 19, 2012

Alex, site staff already got in touch with me and they're on it. In any event, I really didn't post to point fingers at anybody, it's just that I (worryingly) noticed this growing trend in the last couple of months.
 
Lucia Leszinsky
Lucia Leszinsky
SITE STAFF
Locking thread Jun 19, 2012

Thanks Rossana for your reply to my email message. Like I said in my reply, I will take care of making sure proper attribution is included in posts made by site staff from now on.

And since this issue has been already addressed, and to avoid any posts that may not be on-topic, I am locking the thread.

Thanks everyone!

Lucia
 


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Blogspam and Proper Netizen Etiquette






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